Enter The Terrier

Michigan's first round opponent is Wofford, the single representative from the Southern Conference. It will not surprise you that Wofford's mascot is the terrier. Since 90% of terriers are named something along the lines of "Wofford," this is a natural fit. Also Wofford has the best logo in college sports.

Anyway, Wofford finished in a tie for third in the SoCon, well behind regular-season champion Davidson. They won the conference tourney after Western Carolina took out Davidson in OT by beating WCU themselves.

Let's meet the Terriers.

Kenpom Says

As 15 seeds go, Wofford is a good draw. They're 184th; the other 15s are 98th, 129th, and 163rd. The only teams Michigan's played in that range this year they've blown out… or lost to that one time:

#145 Long Beach State: W 85-61

#176 Charlotte: L 63-61

#151 Holy Cross: W 88-66

#135 Northwestern: W 74-51

Meanwhile, Wofford's ventures into the Kenpom 100 have not gone well. At all:

#75 Georgia: L 72-52

#76 Iona: L 76-55

#57 Minnesota: L 79-57

#34 Saint Louis: L 66-52

#12 VCU: L 72-57

All of these games were double-digit losses, as were Wofford's two conference matchups against #118 Davidson. In their only other game against a team in the top 200 on Kenpom they lost to William and Mary by three, at home.

Everything is crazy, etc., but Wofford hasn't been able to stay in contact with any team approaching Michigan's stature. Save an inexplicable reversion to Charlotte form complete with Caris LeVert sitting for most of the first half, Glenn Robinson getting only nine minutes, and Nik Stauskas limping around in the second half, Michigan should win the game.

Maybe You Should Play More Than Two Guys

In addition to William & Mary, Wofford also took on Emory & Henry and Johnson & Wales this year. Both of those are lower division teams; it is a great disappointment that Wofford's third game against a non D-I opponent was against Hiwassee instead of, I don't know, Steve & Bruce.

You'll Hear About

Primary game storyline will be about Aerris Smith, a senior with a senior citizen's knees who gutted out this season despite having no business doing anything more strenuous than thinking about chess while lying down and having a lemonade.

His minutes plummeted due to health issues this year but he played a few painful possessions for most of the year. He won't play against Michigan; he will get a soft-focus feature.

You'll Actually Watch Play

Terrier point guard Karl Cochran is a Russ-Smith-level go to guy and a magnificent statistical oddity. For one, last year he launched 40% of Wofford's shots when he was on the court. This was a situation of desperation as the 2013 Terriers were horrendous—like 339th horrendous—on offense and he was the only semblance of a pulse. His usage was second in the country.

This year he's dialed his role in the offense back from insane to implausible. He still launches a third of Wofford's shots, but he's matured into a terrific all-around player. He's near the top 100 in steals, hits 40% from deep, has an Albrecht-level assist rate with a low TO margin, and does all of this with astronomical usage. And then there's his incredible 18% DREB rate, equivalent to Jordan Morgan's. Karl Cochran is 6'1".

Cochran's main problems: he does not get to the line much—just 74 FTAs despite the huge usage—and he is not effective inside the line. He is taking a lot of Dion Harris shots, I'm sure.

The Terriers are very small. Wofford's primary interior dude is 6'6" junior Lee Skinner, who has very good rebound rates, doesn't shoot well, and gets to the line. The backup posts are 6'7" and 6'6"; Wofford plays two of those three post-type objects the whole game. Except for that bit about fouls, that sounds like a good matchup for Jordan Morgan. Hopefully Mike Kitts is somewhere far away with a sock stuffed down his mouth.

Wofford gets some three-point shooting from a couple of freshmen who occupy a designated corner gunner role, but outside of Designated Corner Gunner and Cochran none of their guys are a threat to pull up unless a 30% shooter is a threat. Shut up about Shannon Scott.

They've Got The Same Shirts

Adidas: not even trying.

"You want us to design MULTIPLE shirts? Like, more than one? As many as several? What do we look like, an enormous international clothing retailer?"

Also, all of those guys have a career in voiceovers waiting for them when they're done. Those are some sonorous mofos right there.

The Future Should Michigan Be Fortunate Enough To Advance

Michigan did get stuck in a loaded regional, but it's mostly loaded for everyone else. Wichita draws the #17 team in Kenpom (Kentucky) as a potential second round matchup and the #2 (Louisville) in a potential Sweet 16 game. UMass will enjoy being a major underdog against a play-in game winner, whoever it is. Tennessee is somehow ranked above(!) Michigan.

Michigan did field the minor misfortune of drawing Duke—both the committee's and Kenpom's top #3. This is a tiny disadvantage relative to other threes. The difference between the Blue Devils and Creighton is nonexistent and Michigan also had a road loss to Iowa State. I only regret not drawing a flailing Syracuse outfit.

The only bad thing about the regional from Michigan's perspective is the very low chance their hypothetical elite eight matchup will be a non-elite team. That is not a big deal. If they were relying on an Arizona/Florida/Virginia upset in the other regions that wasn't likely to happen anyway.

Rick Barnes answers the question "how many NCAA wins do I have since 2009?"

The more important thing is that the potential second round matchup against Texas or Arizona State seems comfortable. Texas is the worst 7 by some distance; their lone nonconference game of any credit to them is a narrow win at North Carolina and they went 11-7 in the Big Twelve. They are atrocious shooters in all departments and rely on offensive rebounding to prop their offense up. They try to block everything and give up a bunch of OREBs themselves. Anything can happen, etc. It's not a scary profile.

Arizona State is in largely on the strength of a double OT home win over Arizona. Their most notable nonconference win is over Marquette; they got blasted by Creighton on a neutral court; they went 10-8 in the Pac-12 and got blown off the court by Stanford in their conference tournament opener. They're almost the complete opposite of Texas on offense: good shooters who abandon the offensive boards like crazy. On defense they are just like Texas, anchored by a shot-blocker.

Neither of these outfits is a UConn or Memphis or Kentucky that would veritably loom as a potential second round exit. Then once you get to the Sweet 16, you're going to be playing someone pretty good, and Duke's hardly invulnerable against lower-level teams. In the past month they've lost to Wake Forest, scraped by Clemson by a point, scraped by Maryland by a point. They could go down.

Yeah, it's loaded. For Wichita. I'll take a rematch against Duke in Indianapolis with a healthy Nick Stauskas as a potential coinflip S16 matchup.

It wasn't a great moment for Michigan hockey, but that game brings back memories of Bob Norton on NCAA hockey broadcasts. Norton never failed to mention the high school or prep school attended by the players.

I'm glad someone has my back in this "we didn't get a doomsday draw" argument. Duke is not invincible, and most of the time you're going to have to beat at least one good team to make the elite eight anyway. In case last season caused any of us to forget, it's not somewhere we get to all that often. Our first opponent is a cupcake, much worse than the Ohio team was that upset us two years ago. Our second opponent won't be all that great as sevens or tens go. Kansas has to play a seriously undervalued New Mexico team. We're in much better shape here.

I don't even understand why people bother bringing up Kentucky. They're not beating Kansas State, Wichita, and Louisville in successive games. They're seeded low for a reason: They've lost ten games this year.

Louisville is good, Wichita is good. But if we face either of them then that means we've already won three games and are playing for a second straight trip to the final four. And I'm not sure either of those two teams would be worse than having to play Florida, Arizona, or the Virginia/MSU winner. So how bad is the draw, really?

I welcome the opportunity to play Duke because I love the idea of beating Duke. Duke is bound to lose in the tournament, its what they do. Morris almost sent them home a few years back and now we (maybe) have the chance to do it again. Stauskas should want MAJOR revenge after that first game. Be on the lookout for #deathfromabove redux!

...is the most meaningless conversation there is. the odds that it ever plays out as expected are very, very slim, particularly when you start talking about anything beyond the first weekend. someone will go down.

this morning i had a conversation with a co-worker who said "at least we won't have to face sparty until the national championship game," which is a pointless conversation on about three different levels.

I'm seriously considering changing my 6pm ET flight on Thu evening with just wifi, to the 8pm, which should have DirectTV. Then again, delays are so frequent at LGA, I may not even get on the plane until midway through the 2nd half. Oh, what to do, what to do...

Will they be replaying games online at all? I saw that the March Madness app has highlights/clips, but didn't mention full game replays.

the issue is that both flight options will overlap the game, either at the beginning or at the end. If I could stream the game in flight or watch it on DirectTV, that would be ideal, but in flight wifi is usually throttled to prevent bandwidth hogs. I'd also imagine that this time of year stresses in flight wifi more than most.

GRIII got injured 9 minutes in and didnt return, Caris got in foul trouble and didnt play much, everyone missed every shot, Nik was the only person playing and then got injured with 5 minutes to play and while he stayed in the game he was completely useless. Oh and Charlotte had one of those strong, brawler 4's like Dawson and Behanan who always crushes Michigan teams.

The loss doesnt really say anything about our team that we don't already know.

Agreed, first round is very favorable and second round are two teams that if UM is on should take out. I am still a bit wary of the size Texas brings however, and would rather face ASU even though they have the 1 elite player of the 2 teams. Guard oriented teams make me much more happy at this point with the current state of our defense.

Once you get into the sweet 16 you have to assume you are playing either top end teams or a very hot team so no excuses from there. If you tell me we need to beat 1 top 15 team to get to the elite 8, I'd take that any year.

Is the matchup problem provided by Parker. GRIII tends to struggle more with bigger, stronger guys at the 4. The good thing about Duke though is that they pretty much struggle just as much as Michigan on defense, meaning that Michigan could give up points but turn it into a shootout, which isn't a bad option after a half week rest in the sweet 16.

Maybe I'm paranoid, but at the end of the BTT final, Stauskas was limping a bit. I couldn't tell what happened because a State fan was in my ear (no, I did not give the police a reason to enter my residence).

In my depressed state after the game I forgot all about what initially had alarmed me.

Then I read the end of this post about how Brian will take a healthy Stauskas...now, I don't really care what this actually means as long as it does not mean he is nursing a lower limb injury.